


Warm in the Night (Cold as a Stone)

by orbythesea



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-09
Updated: 2007-06-09
Packaged: 2017-10-18 21:54:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/193704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orbythesea/pseuds/orbythesea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She thought she'd found him once, in a man whose eyes betrayed the lie of youth he wore as armor."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Warm in the Night (Cold as a Stone)

> _I have spoke with the tongue of angels  
>  I have held the hand of a devil  
> It was warm in the night  
> I was cold as a stone_  
> -U2, I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

She's had a string of lovers, each affair ending sooner than the one before it. She isn't proud of her behaviour, but she refuses to allow herself even a modicum of shame. She was searching for something then, and even knowing she would never find it trolling for sex in a pub or in a fresh face asking far too enthusiastically for a name scrawled in the front pages of a book, she could never bring herself stop looking.

She thought she'd found him once, in a man whose eyes betrayed the lie of youth he wore as armor. Timeless, he was, both too old and too young, with a smile that could melt anyone in the room and the arrogance of someone who knew it.

"Sarah Jane Smith."

When she turned at his voice, it was his eyes that gave him away. Awed, a bit innocent devil, and far too haunted. She took the glass from his extended hand and they sat too close together in a tiny little corner booth.

"I've been looking for you," he whispered against her ear, breath cool against her skin. That first drink turned into the second, and they spoke in riddles, testing one another. Two drinks became four, and he folded his long frame into her tiny little car.

K-9's greeting was enthusiastic, and she offered no explanation of her pet. When his eyes lit up in a moment of recognition, she knew that if she wasn't dreaming, she was right.

It was only later that she realized just how wrong she'd been. Resting her head against his chest, expecting the odd double rhythm she hadn't heard in years, there was only eerie, unnatural silence.

"You're not who I thought you were," she said, propping her chin up to meet those eyes, now dark and brooding.

"I know," he said, and for a moment she thought that might be all. "And you don't have the information I thought you did."

"Who are you?"

"We could help each other," he offered. "We've both been looking for the same man."

She shook her head, pulling her pale blue sheet tight around her body. "He's been gone for a long time now."

He left a card on her kitchen table, twenty one hexagons on one side, eleven digits on the other. Torchwood, Mr. Smith told her. She didn't phone, and the lonely stranger never returned.

That was the morning K-9 fell silent, and a year later, she found what she'd been looking for. His smile was warm, but this new Doctor was colder, darker. She had so very much to say, but for once in her life, the words simply refused to come.

Instead, she spoke of years ago, and she thought she must have sounded like a petulant child. He looked younger than he had any right to be, but he had moved on. He'd lived another 200 years, and it was time to pull herself out of stasis. It was not the reunion she'd been hoping for, but it was, somehow, precisely what she'd needed.

The groan of the TARDIS echoed in her ears as she turned the card over in her hand, finally punching numbers into her mobile. "I'm through looking," she informed him. "Best of luck to you."


End file.
